


he ain't heavy, he's my brother

by smoothmovebro



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brothers, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 14:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13033338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smoothmovebro/pseuds/smoothmovebro
Summary: I stole my older brother's Jason mask.Rich barely mentions his brother to anyone. Why should he? It never comes up in daily conversation so he keeps quiet about him. But he's been through some tough shit with his brother.Just because he doesn't live under the same roof as him and their dad doesn't mean that the two are no longer close.





	he ain't heavy, he's my brother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [papajakeu](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=papajakeu).



> written for nanowrimo 2017

You never really love your siblings. They’re people that happen to share the same parents as you and, if you’re fortunate, live in the same house as you do. Proximity and genetic influences affect your relationship but in the end, you’re both people that will lead very different lives.

So why should they matter?

Rich never understood why people loved their siblings. He hates his older brother. Hates that he teases him for his height. Hates that he’s out of college and he’s still stuck in high school. Hates that he moved out to leave him alone with their dad. Hates that they were never that close.

Hates that he never made a move to _be_ close…

He curls up in bed and pushes his earplugs further in. The snores have become unbearable and he wishes the walls were an inch thicker, at least. The tense feeling in his chest has come back and it’s with an intensity he hasn’t felt since the Halloween party at Jake’s. It’s like a slow but sure grip on his heart, making the breath in his lungs come up short. His hands start to go clammy and he shifts even more in bed. Why can’t he get comfortable? Why can’t he just _shut off his brain_ like everyone else does when they fall asleep?

* * *

“Sleep is like an orgasm: if you think about it too much, you won’t be able to get it.”

Rich raises his eyebrow at his brother. “Bullshit.”

The older Goranski smirks in retort. “Don’t believe me?”

“I don’t believe you’ve had an orgasm to make that comparison.”

“And I don’t believe that you’re dating Chloe Valentine from your grade, so who’s the liar here?”

Rich pouts and turns on his side so he’s facing away from his brother from his side of the room. “Let me dream, alright?”

The other boy stands up from his bed and approaches Rich’s. Rich peers over his shoulder to glare at his brother. “What do you want?” Rich asks.

“I know why you have trouble sleeping and you don’t have to be ashamed of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” More sulking and staring moodily at the wall.

“Dad’s snores get to me too sometimes. But I’ve been hearing it way longer than you so I got used to it.” He ruffles Rich’s hair and the younger brother jerks away. “I’ll get you something to help you sleep.”

“I don’t need drugs!” Rich calls out.

Rich feels two small foam pellets drop by his face. “They’re earplugs, idiot,” his brother says. “They’re fresh from the pack, too.”

Rich takes the foam pellets, inspects them, and puts them in his ears. Now, everything is quieter, like he’s in the bottom of a pool and he’s hearing everything at a distance. “Sleep well, shortass,” is the last thing he hears before the lights turn dim.

Rich gets the most fitful sleep he’s had that week.

* * *

The door opens just a smidge and Rich peers into the house. No sign of his dad. He checks his watch again to make sure.

It’s half past nine.

He pushes the door open all the way and closes it with the same silence as he opened it. He takes slow but silent steps toward his room.

The first day of play rehearsal for their latest production wasn’t bad, he thinks. He hasn’t read all of the script but they didn’t make it to the parts he hasn’t read because Mr. Reyes wanted to take a Hot Pocket break every fifteen minutes. He kills time after rehearsal at the Menlo Park Mall until it closed and he trudged his way home.

By the time he cracks open the door to his room, he freezes in the doorway.

His room is a mess. Messier than he’s left it.

All the drawers are opened, some of the contents were dumped on the floor, and his pillow is on his desk. Rich sighs and starts to clean up.

The thing with nosy but alcoholic dads is that they want to pry into your life but do so at sporadic times. They are meticulous with their search for any dirt on you but their constant inebriation dulls their searching finesse. This unfortunate combination manifests in Rich’s father in the form of the man storming into his room and wrecking it trying to look for something to hold against him. Rich takes measures to prevent that by keeping most of his shit in his locker. At the beginning of sophomore year, he stashed his squips into a shoebox. At freshman year, he’d keep the perfume he buys for the dates that never happened in that locker as well. Now, he keeps the copies of the scripts for the plays he does in there.

He cleans up his room, changes into pyjamas, grabs his pillow from his desk, and flops to bed.

He wishes he didn’t have to hide so much from his father.

* * *

“Hey, I just met you! And this is crazy! But here’s my number! So call me maybe!”

Rich slides around the room in his socks and boxers, bopping to that new hit from this unknown chick. The speakers on his desk blast out the infectious tune and he moves his body to the catchy rhythm. He shimmies from side to side and skips out a complicated pattern with his feet. He does a spin and ends the song with a flourish and a flick of the wrist.

He cowers in on himself when he hears applause by the doorway.

“You really should join the dance club or something,” his brother says with a smirk. He walks into the room, dumps his bag, then walks out again.

“Where are you going?” Rich asks.

“Friends! College thing.”

Rich puts on a shirt and follows his brother to the dining room. “You won’t tell dad about the dancing, right?” He watches his older brother grab snacks from the pantry and stuff them in his jacket pockets. “He’ll kill me if he knows!”

His brother looks around the kitchen before leaning in close. “Don’t let other people stop you from loving the things you love.”

Rich blinks at the heartfelt advice, then flips the mood like he always does. “Like pussy?”

This earns him another smirk and ruffle to his hair. “Like pussy,” his brother repeats. He walks away while munching on the snacks and leaves the house. “Don’t wait up!”

Rich waves him goodbye and goes back to his room. He lets his speakers play the song again, but a little fainter this time. He sits on the edge of his bed and pulls up a photo of Jake Dillinger in his phone. It’s a candid one he took while the other boy was in football practice. Jake looks really happy in this one.

“But what if it’s the world stopping you from loving the people you love?” he says to himself.

* * *

Unlike Jeremy, Rich didn’t get a lot of visitors at the hospital. He doesn’t mind. It’s not like he has a lot of people who will miss him and visit him regularly.

Jake was a pleasant surprise when he dropped by. Jeremy was still passed out and Michael just left the room after visiting Jeremy for the umpteenth time. Rich sits up at Jake’s arrival.

“What’re you doing here?” Rich asks. He chooses his words so that his lisp isn’t so obvious. He isn’t so sure that he wants Jake to know this about him yet.

Jake shrugs and sits on the edge of the bed. “A taller version of you asked me to drop by and see how you were doing.”

“A taller…?”

The door opens and Rich’s brother walks in. For the first time, he’s seeing the older Goranski since he moved out after graduating college. Rich grins wide. He looks at Jake and his brother.

“Don’t you have school or something?” Rich winces at his emerging lisp.

“Oh,” Jake says. He takes a step back and gestures at his legs. “I kinda can’t go. Broke both my legs.”

“But what about the play?”

Jake shrugs. “I’ll think of something.”

Rich’s brother chimes in. “God, I don’t know _how_ Clarissa knew about the fire but I’m glad she told me as soon as she could.” He approaches the bed and hovers a hand over Rich’s casted leg. He bites his lip and lets his hand drop to a spot beside Rich’s leg. “I’m just… sorry that I couldn’t be there.”

Rich’s heart clenches at the sincerity in his brother’s voice. The downcast gaze, that nervous fidget of his where he crosses and uncrosses the fingers on his left hand… It made him look smaller than Rich.

“Hey, I…” Rich clears his throat. “It’s okay.”

His brother looks up with disbelief. “Okay?! You’re in a full body cast! Someone’s house burnt down and-”

“Actually, I’m okay with it,” Jake interjects. “I can set up some repairs and it’ll be like it never happened.”

The other Goranski stares at Jake, then at Rich. “Are you two boning? Because this guy _cannot_ be okay with his _house burning down_ unless you were somehow involved.”

Rich winces and opens his mouth to reply. Jake interjects.

“Yeah, Rich set the fire. And I’m okay with it because,” Jake shrugs, “he’s my friend. After knowing why it really happened, I understood.”

“Wait,” Rich says. “You know about the squip?”

“Squip?” his brother repeats.

Jake relays his limited knowledge about the SQUIP, with Rich providing corrections or more in-depth commentary. Rich’s brother stares at the younger teens as they describe a grey oblong pill that supposedly helped his kid brother go from the nerd he left behind to the… new person in front of him.

The older Goranski makes a ‘T’ shape with his hands. “Hold on. So, like, you need Mountain Dew Red?”

“That’s the plan,” Rich replies. “But no one at the party had any.”

“That’s because it got discontinued in the nineties, idiot.”

Rich made a face. “How was I supposed to know that?!”

“But if it got discontinued,” Jake starts, “then we can’t ever get rid of the squip.”

Rich’s brother takes out his phone and starts texting. “No,” he says, gripping the device. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Rich cranes his neck. “Who are you texting?”

The older Goranski puts down his phone and looks at Rich. “I’ve failed you so many times as a brother. I think this is the least I could do to make it up to you.”

“What?” Rich says. “You never failed me-”

“Just!” His older brother pauses and takes a deep breath. “I wasn’t as good of a brother as I should’ve been so let me do this one thing.”

Before the silence stretches to that awkward point, the older Goranski’s phone beeps. He looks at the message and bolts out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Jake calls out.

“To get your Mountain Dew Red!”

**Author's Note:**

> based on true events  
>  ~~me?? writing a self projecting fic??? pffftttt~~


End file.
